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Canada got the last hurrah at the Celebration of Light Saturday evening, closing the three-night event with a winning display. Canada was declared the winner of the event, with Brazil and China finishing second and third, respectively.

Daphne Bramham: There is no downside to happiness

Happiness — feeling safe, trusting your neighbours, the police and the courts, having friends, a sense of self-worth and control over your life — is being treated as if it’s nearly as important as your share of the national wealth.

Suddenly, economists — the dismal scientists — were talking about and studying things more esoteric than gross domestic product per capita.

They still are and they’re using words like eudaimonic — a contented state of being happy, healthy and prosperous — and other words like it that for millennia were used almost exclusively by philosophers and religious leaders.

Now, happiness — feeling safe, trusting your neighbours, the police and the courts, having friends, a sense of self-worth and control over your life — is being treated as if it’s nearly as important as your share of the national wealth.

And policy-makers and corporations are starting to pay attention.

Why? Because happiness researchers — economists, sociologists, psychologists and others — have found that happy people are good for the economy.

Happier people are healthier, so they cost the health system less. Happy people — in the eudaimonic sense of the word opposed to the smiley-face way — are better, more productive, creative and collaborative employees. (They’re also more willing to be more flexible in salary negotiations.)

Happier people are more generous with both their money and their time, which bolsters tax-supported social safety nets.

More surprisingly, four recent studies have concluded that childhood happiness destines people to earn significantly higher incomes, be less likely to engage in risky behaviour, consume less and be at lower risk of divorcing.

So, what could or should that mean for the way children are taught? Or how much money is spent on education?

The authors of the 2013 World Happiness Report, which was released this week, suggest that happy citizens may be willing to pay higher taxes if they believe the services they receive over time are worth it.

It’s because several studies indicate that happy people are less likely to choose short-term gratification over long-term benefits.

It’s noteworthy that among the top 10 countries in the World Happiness Report’s ranking are countries that also rank at or near the top when it comes to personal income tax rates.

Happy people are less willing to engage in risky activities, according to unpublished research led by British statistician Robert Goudie cited in the latest World Happiness Report.

Using a representative sampling of 313,354 American households, the study determined that individuals who are “very satisfied” with life are more likely to always wear a seatbelt. Over a period of several years, they were also less likely to be involved in accidents.

This has implications for both governments and the insurance industry. The bottom line is that there is no downside to happier societies.

The research is so compelling that in March the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development approved a set of guidelines to help countries measure happiness so they can begin to incorporate well-being into their policy-making.

But among the big unanswered questions is: How do you create those better societies?

Since 2011, Britain’s Office for National Statistics has been measuring some of the intangibles of well-being to come up with a regular fix on people’s well-being.

One interesting finding is that “rurality” and “green space” are key drivers for a sense of well-being. This would hardly come as a surprise to municipal politicians like Gregor Robertson, who has already committed to making Vancouver the greenest city in the world.

And when you consider that the majority of the world’s populations now live in cities and that migration from rural to urban areas shows little sign of slowing, how cities are planned, designed and developed will not only be in the national political interest but corporate interests as well.

One of the benefits of this happiness research is that it should embolden politicians to step in when citizens may not be acting in their own best interests, former British cabinet minister Gus O’Donnell wrote in one chapter of the World Happiness Report.

“Those on the right are attracted to policies that involve small changes and do not require government to be heavy-handed, for example by banning certain products or very restrictive regulations,” O’Donnell writes.

“Those on the left emphasize the need to protect individuals from exploitation by companies or even corrupt governments.”

Climate change offers a panoply of issues that fall into this category.

Cars-versus-bicycles is one Vancouverites are all too familiar with, while the long-running debate over transit’s high cost has left few Surrey citizens feeling happy.

B.C.’s carbon tax is another contentious one.

But there is also cautionary advice to policy-makers in the happiness research.

Citizens are happiest when they respect their politicians and those policy-makers actually listen when they solicit their views.

Happiness — feeling safe, trusting your neighbours, the police and the courts, having friends, a sense of self-worth and control over your life — is being treated as if it’s nearly as important as your share of the national wealth.

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